Business And Economy Archive

Thread: How to make 10 Million

RelicOMO
Thu Feb 24, 2005 11:46 pm
#1

In keeping with the other two threads in this vein, this thread deals with those who have gotten a start, and now want to really start to make some money so they can make a few high end purchases. To make 10 million, you should probably be at the very least a master of some elite combat profession plus support professions, or a master crafter of some sort, or somewhere in between. You should also go through all of the tips on how to make 1 million, because they are just as applicable here.


Even though you see people tossing around millions on the forums etc., 10 million is still a significant amount of money. It buys a fair bit – virtually unlimited basic gear, a few higher end pieces, some very good attachs, and generally one high end item like a great krayted weapon or an anti-decay kit. It’s important to bear that in mind – despite the devaluation of the credit and the hundreds of millions a few people do have, 10 million is still a lot of money. Concentrate on what you do have, rather than what you don’t – it’s a good recipe for happiness in general.


***


Again, your sources of income are the same as at lower levels – the system, or other players. The system can give you creds in the form of missions, rewards, and loot. Other players can give you creds for any one of a number of reasons, not all of them good ones.


Missions. It’s tough to make a ton of money just from missions, particularly without solo groups, but it can be done. Your best bet is to combine running missions with getting something else, such as harvesting resources, gathering loot, and so on. Get an ATST or another large pet if you can – it will enable you to pull the 25-30k missions by yourself, and keep the payout entirely to yourself. It doesn’t take long to make several hundred k this way, and you can usually expect some manner of loot in the meantime, such as janta blood/hides or rancor parts. But again, just missions can get boring – I would recommend either doing missions with some other point in mind, such as harvesting, or only doing them for an hour or so a buff session to make a regular tick of 300k or so and keep the income rolling in.


Looted creds. Do not underestimate this. As a double master combat profession, when I go out and massacre NPCs such as Nightsisters or faction NPCs for a buff session, I regularly make 100-200k in looted creds alone. This is not a small amount of money – it pays for my buff, my tips, my travel, and then some. It also means that anything else I get such as loot is gravy. Even without being a profession that can slaughter Nightsisters all day, NPC rich areas such as Lok can still make you a lot of money in looted creds basically for nothing, since you’re there killing for loot or whatever anyway. You might not notice it, but it adds up.


JTL. As a master pilot profession, you can make quite a bit from duty missions and space loot. Duty mission payouts are just as fast, and larger on average, than ground mission payouts, plus any master pilot can get them solo. Deep space is still a large source of looted creds, even without the 1 million payout for the Rebel station. And L8-9 space loot isn’t something a shipwright generally wants unless it’s quality, so sell it to the chassis dealer – each one pays for a buff or a dancer tip. And anyone can be a master pilot, added on to any template.


Gathering resources. Unfortunately, with the veteran reward resource kits, this is no longer the source of money it once was. This is a tremendous shame, because this is how the ‘fat cat’ crafters gave their money back to the rest of the community, and now it’s more or less unnecessary. Still, some crafters do still pay for bulk quality hides and meat, and even sometimes for mining contracts still if they can’t mine themselves. I would recommend, again, making a deal with the crafter before you go and get the resources – agree on an amount and a price, and meet that bargain.


Crafting. To make a significant amount of money from crafting, even if it’s a sideline for you, you’re going to need to understand some basic business fundamentals. Those are beyond the scope of one paragraph here – there’s a lot to go over, but it’s best if you ask other crafters in your profession how they set up their business, ask other crafters on your server how they did it, or just ask successful SWG crafters you respect how they did it. There’s a lot to learn, and it’s well worth the effort, but you must understand these basic business fundamentals. Perhaps they’re worth discussing in another thread.


Loot. Loot selling is probably the easiest way to make 10 million or so – after all, some people spend 10 million on just one item. Again, however, you must know what the value of things are, even on a very vague ballpark level. Read your trade forums, scope other peoples loot vendors (with the understanding in mind that if you can see it on a vendor, nobody has yet bought it) and get a feel for what people value. Then you can decide whether you are better off selling lots of smaller things (regular sales of janta bloods/hides, regular sales of tissues/pearls, despite the fact that they’re much more worthless now, etc) or whether you’re better off trying to loot a big thing and make the money in one big windfall (such as camping Nyax and getting a +16 2hspeed tape). Even if you are not one of the bigtime loot hunters, you can still get these things. Krayts are as common as chubas now, Nightsisters and Jantas are readily available, and you can always get a group and go and try to outdamage the Nyax campers. However, you need to understand what people are paying for and what people are buying – research is your best friend here. For my own recommendations, I would suggest – Janta bloods and hides if you are by yourself, Nightsister loots if you can get a friend, and the Corvette or Nyax if you can get a few friends. Lok NPCs are also a fantastic place to go – lots of loots, and a surprisingly high attachment drop rate, similar to what Endor Marauders used to have before they were broken in the loot revamp.


Equip yourself wisely. It’s the easiest thing in the game to spend millions – much easier than making it. Basically, if you want to start accumulating wealth, you must run yourself at a profit. Don’t buy that million cred krayt weapon if you hunt Canyon Corsairs 99% of the time. It’s really not necessary. Don’t go nuts on 90% armour if you don’t tank krayts or elders. Again, it’s not necessary, not even for PvP. People tell you it is, but really – how often do you die from being shot or hit with non-stun, non-lightsaber weapons? Even in 80% armour you don’t die this way. You die from dots, you die from stun, you die from lightsabers. Perhaps, with a rifleman shooting you in the head with a DXR enough, you might die from that too. And a TKM can kill you by dizzy/kd and using Nexu Grin a few thousand times, so perhaps if you are a hardcore PvPer a 90% helmet is wise. But really, most of your deaths will come from weapons that 90% armour doesn’t do anything against. You do need to spend money to make money, but you don’t need to spend a ton of money to make money. Equip yourself wisely and frugally – buy 10 point crafter items if you find them. 95% of the things in this game can be killed with non-master doc buffs, 60% armour, and an unenhanced weapon. And make your money a bit at a time if you have to – make 100k from missions a buff session, 50k from looted creds, sell what you get, and you’ll have a lot of creds sooner than you think.


***


Once again, please post any tips, advice, or any comments at all. This region of money seems to be where people are having the most trouble reaching, so anything that helps at all would be much appreciated.




sciguyCO
Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:58 pm
#2

Figured I'd expand on one part that I've recently used to hit 10 million, which I then promptly spent on an +experimentation belt.


Crafting:

There are three things needed to make money regularly as a crafter: quality items, people to buy them, and costs lower than your income.


Quality items:

The "best-of-the-best" items will always require uber resources and 12 experimentation points. It's sad, but it's true.


However, "medium of the best" can be done with 10 points (although you do need to keep an eye out for quality resources), and do sell. Especially if you market to people reading RelicOMO's previous post (where he warned against buying expensive uber-items if you don't really need them).


Resource Quality: Know what you need as far as resource quality. Some 1000DR metal won't do you any good if you're making weapons (which depend on OQ and CD for ranged and SR for melee). The contributing stats (and what percentage they contribute) are listed on every draft schematic you have. It also shows up when selecting resources (along with color coding for a quick quality check).


Make www.swgcraft.com your best friend. This is a player-updated database of resource spawns, letting you see what's available without having to go to every planet and sample it yourself. You can put in stat contribution percentages on the search page, then sort by the "Rating" column to find the ones with the best stats currently spawning (don't forget to check the "Only Available" box to exclude out-of-shift resources, that always defaults to off). Also, as a payback for using it, try to do your part on keeping it up to date. If you find a new in-shift resource that's not listed, put it in and if necessary mark stuff unavailable. Although if it's a really nice resource, find a good concentration to put your harvesters on first to beat people there.


Experimentation: Resource quality gets you a good starting point for experimentation, and also determines where you "cap out" experimenting on a category. A great success adds +7 per point spent in a category. If you cap out at 75%, spending a point there when you've already reached 73% is probably not worth the point.


Also, an amazing success adds +8 to a category. This means you can "fake" having an 11th point without spending millions on an experimentation tape. Putting 7 points into acategory and getting an "amazing success" is the same as putting 8 points into it and getting a "great success" (which is the minimum you should be accepting). Some things to help get you these amazing successes are higher quality crafting tools (they cap at +15, +14 should be pretty easy to get), higher quality personal crafting station (droids and public stations give +0, personal stations give up to +45 with 42-43 being failry common), Bespin Port (a drink to improve your experimental success rate), being in a Research specialized player city, and having the Force Sensitive crafting skills. Also, every +1 to experimentation you can get from tapes improves your success rate, even if you don't have the +10 to get another point. Most crafting professions have a "crafter's apron" (or equivalent) available as a reward schematic for various quests. These items give +5 experimentation / +5 assembly, and can generally be found for 100 to 300k from many tailors. This is a very good investment, since a +5 tape goes for multi-millions.


Getting people to buy your items:

Ok, so you're making items roughly 10-20% worse than those 12 point crafters. Now what?


Well, first, people aren't going to pay the same prices for lower quality, so you have to sell cheaper. Sometimes a lot cheaper, since credits can flow pretty freely for dedicated combat players. They're usually willing to run a few extra missions to get an additional 2% to damage/protection/whatever.


Second, you should have a vendor, otherwise you're limited to person-to-person trades, or the bazaar (with it's 6k price and 25 item limit caps).


Third, you have to let people know your vendor exists. Advertising 3 in Merchant is a simple way, this lets you register your vendor on the planetary map in a given category. If you have multiple vendors, you don't necessarily have to register each one, especially if they are all in the same category. Having a single registered vendor per shop location is all that's really necessary.


Another advertising avenuesis "barking" your itemsin a populated (although this is viewed negatively by many players, especially if you repeat too much) either with your own character or a droid with a barker module. If you have items that fit under the 6k cap, put a few up on the bazaar with a waypoint to your shop in the description. Finally, you can post an advertising thread in your galaxy's trade forum. These work best when you can put as complete an inventory listing as possible (along with prices) in the post, along with (obviously) a waypoint to your shop. Excessive bumping of an ad thread (more than once every few days) will probably be seen as desperation, though, so be careful with that.


Most crafters sell consumable items (architects, tailors, and to some extent Shipwrights do not), so every customer you sell to is also a potential repeat customer. If they have a good experience buying from you (well stocked vendor, maybe a nice shop layout, personal service if you happen to run into them), they're more likely to come back with more credits to transfer to your bank account. Also, word-of-mouth advertising is a lovely thing. I helped out a player who was searching for a food vendor, and he liked my shop so much he recommended me to his entire guild. That was probably the fastest-selling week of my chef career (and some are still coming back).


Finally: location, location, location. Players like convenience, which is why you see so many shops just outside the no-build zone of major NPC cities (Theed, Coronet, and Bestine are major hotspots). However, there are also many player cities that get a lot of traffic, and those are good shop locations too. If it's near a popular POI (Krayt Graveyard on Tatooine, Warren on Dantooine, etc) with a shuttleport, you can almost be guaranteed a steady stream of players passing through, each of them a potential customer.


Other NPC cities can be just as good as Theed or Coronet (since most of the buildable area around those cities has already been taken). With the new GCW planetary control system, the "stronghold" cities (which never change allegience) may be good places if you market to a particular faction, although that's still too new to be sure. For best results,try to be close to an NPC city with a starport (to allow off-planet players to get to you without an additional shuttle hop).


Costs < Income:

I know, definitely a "duh" suggestion, but smart money management is the key between a crafter with 10 million credits and one with tons of sales and only 100k in the bank.


Income is mainly controlled by your item pricing and number of sales, both covered in the second section of my post, so I'll leave that where it is.


The most extreme way to cut costs is to do everything yourself: harvest all your own resources, make all your own subcomponents, run all your own vendors, etc. However, depending on your rate of sales, this can turn SWG from a fun game into a second job. Also, the 250 skill point and 10 lot limits may make that unfeasible. Well, unless you decide to buy a second account to have an "alt" to expand your abilities, but personally I find the idea of spending another Real Life $15 a month to make more fake credits a little odd.


Harvesting your own non-creature resources is definitely do-able, since the majority of crafting professions branch off of Artisan, allowing you to survey for whatever you need. Again, watch swgcraft.com for good quality stuff, and drop your harvesters. Heavy harvesters pull in the most, which can be a concern if you need large amounts of resources (say your an Architect or Shipwright). But Medium harvesters are the most efficient as far as costs are concerned, so unless you absolutely need the mass quantity per shift (or need to place harvesters on a lot of different resources), I'd suggest sticking to mediums.


Whether or not to get your own creature resources depends on whether you have the SP free for combat and scout skills, and the time to go hunt them up. Another option is to contract out to professional scouts/rangers to get the meat, hide, or bone for you (although this will be more expensive, especially for big-demand resources like Avian or Herbivore meat).


A few professions require subcomponents from other professions. Architects and Droid Engineers need items made by a Master Artisan. Armorsmiths need Tailor components. Chefs need Tailor and BE components. Again, you can spend the SP to make these yourself (which may also require additional factories), or try to find another player to partner with. You can either buy the finished items, or possibly trade for the schematic itself (which generally requires you supplying the necessary resources).


The final money sink to keep an eye on is maintenance, for your harvesters, vendors, the houses to hold the vendors, and factories. The Merchant Efficiency skill branch can help reduce these monetary costs (but do require spending skill points). Vendor maintenance can be kept down by not turning on all the extra features (vocalization, planetary registration, etc) unless you need them. Factory maintenance is probably a continuing cost to deal with, although if you're going to be leaving them idle for more than a couple of days, it's more efficient just to re-deed them (although if you're in growth area, you may want to leave them just so someone doesn't put a house on top of where they were). Unless you're dealing with lot-traded harvesters (which is a risk in and of itself), those should only be placed when they're gathering resources for you.


It's unlikely that you'll make 10 million in anything short of a few weeks (at least until you get the 12 experimebtation points, the uber resources, and a good reputation), but it can be done.


Sheesh, that got long, didn't it?





Kriles Ch'artoff , Chilastra server
Master Chef (retired)
Currently doing....stuff
Ledao
Fri Feb 25, 2005 6:20 pm
#3

I'd perhaps add one more section -- and I think it fits in at this level, as opposed to at the "how to make 100 mil" level...


Commodities Brokering / Reselling of Manufactured Goods. I believe that there is still room within the economy for someone with a certain amount of savvy to make a nice living without actually creating anything (as crafters create goods, miners create resources, and combateers create money, loot, and/or resources).This could be accomplishedby buying resources cheaply in spawn,sitting on them for a few weeks, and selling them for a small profit, by finding crafters who are unable to sell as many goods as they're able to produce and making reselling arrangements with them, or even by going vendor to vendor looking for good deals and then reselling what you've found on your own vendor.


I'll perhaps add some specific items that I think would be consistently profitable to trade in this manner later (when I have more time), but for now I'll just throw out that I'm continually surprised by how little reselling of manufactured goodsI see going on. I can only assume that every server has at least a few crafters who can't possibly sell as much as they produce, and it is fairly likely that many of them would be open to arrangements that could be lucrative for both parties...


At any rate, must run. I'll come back to this later...




Ledao Bohi, Master Doctor
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SkullBreaker
Sat Feb 26, 2005 7:52 pm
#4

On the topic of reselling stuff, last month I found a +3 Food exp CA on a vendor for 10k. I bought it but as I was putting it into my bank, to clear room in my inventory till the person who was going to buy it got online, I accidenlty destroyed it. I think I died a little on the inside that day. But hey it's all good.



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tpugmire
Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:40 pm
#5

"Equipping yourself wisely"


Another thing that should be mentioned in this category regarding armor is personal shield generators. If you have an anti-decay kit, throw that onto a PSG and keep it equipped all the time. Get some decent composite and buffs and you're good to go, only the strongest NPC's will get to you. I'm a master doc with little combat skills and I can kill most moderate NPC's with ease using that trick.

-Doc-




Doctor Ja'pug
Mon Calamarian CL 90 Master Commando
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RamondChappell
Mon Feb 28, 2005 7:00 pm
#6

Yes, MOST people disregard the Personal Shield Generator. As a Doctor/Merchant who runs a vast mining operation on Lok,I can't tell you how many times my PSG has saved me the mercenaries and canyon corsairs there.
Ratape
Tue Mar 01, 2005 11:26 am
#7

I started playing the game right at release, and continued to play for nearly a year. I then took a break until January of this year and started to play the game again. I started with 325k credits to my name. I had 50k in my bank, received 75k as the 'gift', and then received 200k from a friend to thank me for all the times I helped him when he started the game. I then proceeded to become Master Freelance Pilot. Doing pilot missions, BH mission, and missions without a solo group I can now steadily keep my income up. It is as easy to do as this guide poses it to be.

Great guide, thanks for providing it to the community.



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thecolonelcardaks
Thu Mar 03, 2005 10:35 am
#8

I make alot of my money (now that solo groups are gone) selling meat/hides to armorsmiths/chef's/etc. With just novice scout you can do this. There is ALWAYS some resource spawning that a crafter is looking for and most combat professions can take down anything that loads em. As a riflemen you can kill almost anything and with a little scout, you can make 100's of thousands of credits in a buff session. I made 300k the other day killing bantha's on bloodfin (tat wooley is uber right now and people are paying 85 cpu for it).


Back that up with a little space loot selling and hunting npcs and you cando allright. Nothing like the good old days, but hey if your not an Imperial, your stuck with it.


I also recommend that rebels get something that can give us good missions too!



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MBLAST
Thu Mar 03, 2005 9:10 pm
#9

Just wanted to encourage the 10-point crafters. I've been a 10 pointer, and I've made over 10 million in my sales. As they said, it's ALL about the resources. Constantly hunt those down, and you'll do just fine.



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Trenkor
Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:04 am
#10






RelicOMO wrote:

Looted creds. Do not underestimate this. As a double master combat profession, when I go out and massacre NPCs such as Nightsisters or faction NPCs for a buff session, I regularly make 100-200k in looted creds alone. This is not a small amount of money – it pays for my buff, my tips, my travel, and then some. It also means that anything else I get such as loot is gravy. Even without being a profession that can slaughter Nightsisters all day, NPC rich areas such as Lok can still make you a lot of money in looted creds basically for nothing, since you’re there killing for loot or whatever anyway. You might not notice it, but it adds up.




Could not agree more. Every time I go to the Sennex cave to cap swordsman xp in one buff session, I usually loot about 50k-60k in looted credits every single time I go. This easily pays for my buff, travel costs, tipping the entertainers, buying medicine, etc etc. Just make yourself a nice loot hotkey (I use "/loot all") and your good to go.
KillerCod
Fri Mar 04, 2005 12:14 pm
#11

Don't underestimate the power of the Bazar and random resource sales!

I make a steady income off random resource sales on the bazar. At 6K for a 2-3K stack, keeping it loaded with 25 items at all times, it add's up fast! It's hard to keep my maximum sales on there sometimes...

Beginning crafters need resources too! And most can't afford a 100K stack of whatever to grind with, they have to buy in small increments. I've noticed that 2-3 CPU is a good price for most. If you harvest meat/hide/bone then you can probably get 3-6CPU for them in most cases on the Bazar.

Use what you got, and don't think that just because it's only 6k at a time it won't add up!
thecolonelcardaks
Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:36 am
#12

as a bio, when i need meat when i dont care about the value, i will typically buy any 1k stack off the bazaar, even its for 6k. I say generally, you should sell any creature resource for 6cpu on the bazaar, or 1k stacks for 6k.... 6k is such a low amount that I think its a psychological threshold for people to buy, even if in larger quantities they would get ripped off.


It also takes alot of time to get meat.



ZFrankenFoods Inc., New Thebes, Tatooine, Chilastra
Filandros Wrenchfoot- Master Bio-Engineer
Tissues, Pets, and much more! Email for orders.
(On Bloodfin: Vebu- The penultimate Rifle-CM)
Barndamascus
Sat Mar 05, 2005 2:40 am
#13

Awesome thread. 5*



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